


Fire burns

by sevenofspade



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Fix-It, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-27
Updated: 2015-11-27
Packaged: 2018-05-03 15:19:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5296361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenofspade/pseuds/sevenofspade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Foxface has a plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fire burns

They know about power in District Five. You might even say it’s all they know. They know about power and so they know about fire. Chief among the things they know about fire are these: Fire burns, it’s its nature; don’t play with fire because it might play back and stay away, fire has no foe and fire has no friends. There is no difference between the fire that warms your home and the one who destroys it.

Foxface follows the Girl on Fire and what a laugh that is. The Girl on Fire, as though fire is a thing that can be tamed, as though fire will take kindly to being caged.

They don’t have gods in District Five, but you can’t spend your life elbow-deep in the nervous system of the world without knowing that there are things beyond even the Capitol’s ken. If they did have gods, they would be the gods of fire and charcoal, nuclear waste and cloud factories, electricity and information.

She burned away any trace of herself and made herself someone new before volunteering for the Reaping. Just this once, no one else suffers from the Games. She was once the best student in her class, she’s now a nameless orphan. The Girl on Fire calls her Foxface, so that’s who she now is. And she prays to the gods she doesn’t have that no one ever learns otherwise.

Loverboy from 12 picks berries and she hightails out of there. Nightlock grow in those bushes and if she comes closer, she’ll have to tell him.

Win or lose, she kills no one and no one dies because of her. This her offering to the gods she doesn’t have.

No.

There is no win or lose, not for her, not in these Games. Loverboy and the Girl on Fire made sure of that. There is no way the Game Makers aren’t gearing things up so that these two are the last two standing, so they can pull the rule change at the last minute.

So much for her brilliant plan. It was a good plan, too, but it’ll never work now.

She was going to volunteer for the Games, every year until she died or turned eighteen, as a fuck you to the Capitol and an offering to the gods she doesn’t have. It would have kept a few people safe, for a while.

But she’s not stupid and she always had a back-up plan or two. She’s been planning this for years, after all. Her token is a charm bracelet. Each of the charms is a tiny technological marvel she made herself. They’re completely silent until turned on. 

She goes back to the bush and grabs the berries. She’s careful to make it look like she’s eating them without actually eating any.

With her other hand, she turns on the charm that will be her way out of here. The Capitol tracer under her skin stops working and she turns off the charm too.

She collapses, looking for all the world like a victim of nightlock.

If anyone ever wonders why someone with the scores she had at the plant identification test died the way she did, well... They’ll think she’d had enough and decided to end it. They wouldn’t be wrong.

Some of the little known symptoms of nightlock poisoning are hypothermia and bradycardia. These are usually eclipsed by the main symptom, which is death. However, in cases of consumption of extremely low doses of the seranox toxin, individuals manifested the symptoms for two to ten minutes but were generally revived without ill effect.

When the hovercraft collects her, her thoughts are sluggish, but her heart rate is below 50 bpm and her core temperature below 35°C. She’s effectively pronounced dead before she’s even lifted off the ground.

The hovercrafts are unmanned and no one ever bothers keeping track of the bodies of losing Tributes.

The inside of the hovercraft is sterile and clean and she has fifteen minutes to reprogram it before she’s dumped into an incinerator. The second charm on her bracelet allows her access to the ship’s computer. From then on, she’s on her own.

The code is in no language she’s ever seen, but fuck that, the algorithms and syntax are similar to the ones used in the hoverplants. She quickly locates the subroutine designing destination and modifies it. She makes it drop her off into the forest and pick up a conveniently cut down tree to take her place. 

The part she hates comes next.

She cuts the tracer out of her arm and sticks it in the tree. She tries to bandage her arm as best as she can. Hopefully this, and the vaccines provided by the Capitol, will be enough.

And even if it's not, she's outside the Arena and she's alive. She escaped the Hunger Games.


End file.
